NEPA officials discuss natural gas drilling impact

HARRISBURG - With a state severance tax no longer on the table, the Senate launched a new review Wednesday into the impact of Marcellus Shale drilling on local communities that featured testimony by several officials from Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko was a lead-off witness at a Senate Republican Policy Committee hearing, while officials from Susquehanna and Wyoming counties, also in the heart of the drilling boom region, presented testimony.

Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, set the tone for the hearing, saying that debates over whether to levy a severance tax on natural gas production are in the past.

"We don't have to choose between the environment and jobs," he said. "We can do both."

Gov. Tom Corbett is opposed to a severance tax. Scarnati suggested recently that letting local governments charge impact fees on drilling companies to offset the cost of drilling operations could be an alternate option.

McLinko urged senators to do a comprehensive study of the tax revenue that drilling companies generate before enacting impact-fee legislation. Drilling firms operating in Bradford County are creating jobs, paying property taxes on the land they purchase as well as liquid fuels taxes and hotel room taxes, he said.

"All this expansion and growth will see real estate taxes paid on them," McLinko said. "This industry isn't looking for grants or tax abatements or KOZ (Keystone Opportunity) zones or any government-funded program."

Jim Garner, manager for the Susquehanna County Conservation District, focused on several drilling impacts in his testimony. He said drilling operations are creating emerging issues concerning erosion and sedimentation, stormwater runoff and flood-plain development that will require more attention from his office.

Citing one example, he said the access roads to drilling pads contain roadside ditches that channel runoff and drain into stream channels.

"With each storm event, the runoff from each ditch contributes to some degree of flash flooding and increased stream erosion," Garner said. "It's not the individual impacts of the ditches but the accumulation of possibly thousands of these roadside ditches emptying into our streams."

The Marcellus Shale drilling boom means emergency workers are responding to more hazardous material spills and traffic accidents due to an overall increase in truck traffic, said Eugene Dziak, coordinator of the Wyoming County Emergency Management Agency in testimony.

rswift@timesshamrock.com

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